Ibn Chordadhbeh

Ibn Chordadhbeh (* around 820, † around 912) was an official and geographer in media in western Persia .

life and work

In 847 he wrote the geographically informative work Kitāb al-Masālik wa l-Mamālik (= Book of Ways and Countries ), a route book for traders , in which the trade routes and courier routes of the Islamic world including the post stations from the Caspian Sea and European Russia to Northwest Africa and Spain were documented. The reason was probably the instruction of a subordinate. The collection of his travelogues is extraordinarily extensive and precise. The center of the itinerary is the caliph city of Baghdad .

Ibn Chordadbeh had an Arabic, pictorial, by no means dry tone. A special chapter is reserved for the Jewish merchants, who played a decisive role as mediators between the warring Christians and Muslims and linked the barbaric and economically depressed Occident with the Islamic world and the Orient as far as China in land and sea trade, so that in Occident experienced an economic boom that lasted from the 8th century until the 11th century. To them it says under the heading " Path of the Jewish merchants, the so-called Radhanites ":

“These merchants speak Persian, Romansh (Greek and Latin), Arabic, Franconian languages, Spanish and Slavic. You travel from the Occident to the Orient and from the Orient to the Occident, now by land and now by sea. They bring eunuchs , female slaves and boys, silk, fur products and swords from the West . They embark in the land of the Franks on the Mediterranean and head for Farama (near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium ); there they load their goods on beasts of burden and, at a distance of 20 farsakhs (a unit of measurement of approximately 5.6 km), take five days' marches to Kolzoum (=  Suez ). On the eastern sea (=  Red Sea ) they go to El-Djar (port of Medina ) and to Djeddah ; then they go to Sind (=  Persia ), India and China . On their way back they have loaded musk, aloë, camphor, cinnamon and other products from the oriental regions and reach Kolzoum, then Farama, where they embark again on the Mediterranean. Some set sail for Constantinople to sell their wares there; others go to the land of the Franks.
Sometimes the Jewish merchants on the Mediterranean set course for Antioch on the Orontes . After three days' march they reach the banks of the Euphrates and come to Baghdad . There they sail the Tigris to Basra , from where they sail to Oman , Persia, India and China. So you can travel without a break. "

The original text of the route book is kept in a codex in Oxford .

See also

• Ibn Fadlan
• Kievan Rus
• Spain
• Saqaliba

Web links

• Book of Ways and Countries (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See Maurice Lombard: Monnaie et histoire d'Alexandre à Mahomet , Paris-La Haye 1971. Re-edition 2001: Mouton u. École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, pp. 202-203. - See also Maurice Lombard, The Trade Relations in the Islamic World . In: Maurice Lombard: The heyday of Islam. An economic and cultural history 8.-11. Century , Frankfurt am Main 1992, pp. 206-234. - In summary on Maurice Lombard Alexandre Skirda, La traite des Slaves. L'esclavage des Blancs du VIIIe au XVIIIe siècle , Les Éditions de Paris: Paris 2010, pp. 110–113.
2. ↑ In the Occident there was already in the early days of the Islamic conquest in southern Spain and in Sicily silk worm breeding and silk weaving, the products of which supplemented the trade in Chinese products and were therefore not intended for trade with China, but for the inner-European market. (Instead of silk, "brocade" is also used here in other traditions.)
3. ↑ Le Livre des routes et des provinces par Ibn-Khordadbeh , publié, traduit et annoté par Charles Barbier de Meynard, 1865. - Cf. also Jane S. Gerber: “My heart dwells in the east…” , p. 174. In : Nicholas de Lange (Ed.): Illustrated history of Judaism . Campus, Frankfurt / New York 2000, pp. 161–221.